(Revolution -- 1a: a sudden, radical, or complete change. 1b: a fundamental change in the way of thinking about or visualizing something: a change of paradigm.)

Greetings once again, this time from the land of India, a wealth of weirdness guaranteed to satisfy a piece of everyone's palate. There are people prostrating themselves to cobras in one corner, holy men (sadhus) on lifetime pilgrimage in another corner, and monkeys scattering around all corners ... (real monkeys)

Well, even though the two December 4, 1994 letters I have received were written before the Boxing Day phone call, it seems that all is going smoothly in the Evansburg neighborhood. Likewise, in this neck of the woods, things are developing quite nicely, to say the least. When I checked into this ashram December second, little did I realize that the pieces of the puzzle were to begin taking definite pattern. Here is a generalized review of the last few years as an extension of past letters and an introduction to the letters to follow. Grab your bowl of popcorn, settle into your pillows, and press "play" ...

PIECES I

Screaming Neon Thoughts
Located In Dry Deserts Of Sand
Winds Blow Calling For Change
Mankind Answers, pledging one cent.

How Often Do You Care?
(May 5, 1991)

Back in the days of 1991, the months of June/July/August, I had a very big decision to make. These months were a big turning point for me. It was with a counsellor that I first consciously became aware of limits. When she asked me what I knew about myself in relation to other people, I could not provide a solid answer.

Alone, when I looked to the future I saw two possibilities: (A) forever being perplexed with my existence and doing what others thought would be beneficial for me; and by doing this, being extremely unhappy with myself, or (B) picking myself up, leaving all I had been trying to build behind (relationship, work, religion, friends) and begin acquiring experience and knowledge upon which I could reflect.

I chose (B) and went back to university because I knew from my first year (1989-90) that it was the perfect environment to be exposed to ideas. My 'mission'? To grant myself a period of time (eight months) for unconditional experimentation (as far as I was willing), absolving myself from the guilt others would like to have placed on me for doing so.

Now when I say I was unstable in my teens and early twenties, it is quite true. Coming from a fragmented family into a fragmented world, as a lot of others know, is not easy.

LIES

Inherited behavior
Sent forth with an angered kiss.
Unhappy growlings released in the night
Become sweet smiles in the sunshine.
(Sep 23, 1991)

My first two years of university were minimally productive scholastically, but in the area of hands-on psychology, in dealing with myself and other people, my understanding of behavior began developing. As strongly as I believe in discipline now, recognizing the necessity of law, is as strongly as I believed in systematically studying indiscipline, lawlessness, in the past. In other words, a lot of the things I consider acts of indiscipline today, I pushed to their limits 'yesterday.'

My conclusions? Such methods never made me stronger, they never made me 'live' as is promised; they only served to siphon my strength and take away my life. I think the trick of me drawing the conclusions I have was the fact that I did not casually approach experiencing things. For example, if I drank a beer, and this may seem strange, I drank it seriously. But I did not get drunk on beer, I got drunk on power. Or the sensation of power (control) anyway.

To provide an even stronger example, perhaps stupid, I once locked myself in my room and proceeded to write in my journal while drinking to see how and what I would write from start to finish. I ended up with twelve pages, but nothing of real significance in terms of quality. Upon further observation, the overall effect of alcohol became obvious, and, in my case, the transformation of character quite radical. From mild-mannered, unhappy yet inquisitive, to outrageous, unreasonable, and a wall of anger in front of other people.

Of additional interest, while experimenting, were the people one begins to meet up with and their psychological state. The people I surrounded myself with and drew to me provided me a fantastic insight of myself! If you can imagine me scribbling away in night-clubs, room corners, under streetlamps, in cafeterias, and even while driving, perhaps you can see the seriousness with which I approached my 'work' (in fact, both of my previous girlfriends complained bitterly).

I can recall Dad and Papa often wondering about the quality of the music I listened to -- curious as to what it was I found to be so entertaining (at first, the music's rhythm and artist's image; after a few years, the lyrics; then, the ideas behind the lyrics). When I first found recorded music in 1982, it replaced my lego and star wars toy sets (though the three movies of the latter are still thought about today).

Come 1985 I shifted to a more energetic, louder and angrier form of music. It was around this time I remember hearing even heavier groups, but they sounded like complete chaos to me and I could not bear to listen to gross screeching and screaming without getting a headache. Within a few years, though, I had purchased a lot of these other group's albums.

Come early 1991 with my job at the record store A+B Sound in Vancouver, my tastes split off into two new directions. One was an adoration of new age instrumental music which led me to start purchasing classical titles. Another road took me into further 'chaos.' Slowly I was coming to accept a lot of the music I had considered 'noise' and questionable a few years previous.

In retrospect, each 'fix' in my life had to be of greater stimulation than the last in order to keep me satisfied. The old 'drug' did not work like it used to; either one needs a larger dosage or a new 'drug'. Well, by early 1992, which began the peak of my experimentation in university, I took to the 'alternative' scene and some of its ideas, the following paragraphs being some observations and notes taken along the way.

The music, first of all, is kind of hard to explain. If you can imagine synthesizing electronic noises, instruments, and voices into the wildest arrangements and the weirdest array of songs - from cartoon beats, to haunting melodies, to sheer screaming - perhaps you are half way there. And again, what first struck me as noise grew more ordered as I further exposed myself, thus coming to be synchronized with such rhythm and developing a tolerance to it. These night-clubs, in particular, are always black. There are discos, there are bars, there are pubs, but there have been no other 'getaways' that I have visited which are this intense in trying to create a 'heavy' mood. I found it to be quite pleasing almost instantly: a new stimulus.

The general attitude of the crowd was common enough. They are unhappy with the present world situation and the atmosphere they choose to make for themselves / place themselves in provides a degree of happiness. Fair enough - this can be applied to all people. But the degree of recklessness which some of them pursued happiness, like myself to an extent, astounded me. In essence - "there is no tomorrow."

Alcohol was one thing. Drugs were another. When Dad first read Paper One (November 1993) this was one of the things he did not understanding me trying. He had always allowed me the freedom to do as I pleased, yet I think he was still surprised. For the longest time I had expressed no interest in such things. In fact, I had even prided myself for not having tried them. But come February 1992, after having thoroughly considered the idea for three to four months, talking to many people along the way, gathering knowledge of experiences and written information, I took my first dose of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). The event is recounted in the poem Metamorphosis, its opening lines being:

I desired to flex
The many slippery shades of suggestion.
I wanted to tamper
With my wired existence,
but I needed voltage for my vampirical nature ...
So I summoned it forth.

In total I ended up taking LSD twelve times over a period of seventeen months. These experiences are by far some of the most detailed experiments in my journals, for I wrote page after page on the effects of it. Why do people use drugs? Because they are cheap and damn powerful 'fixes'! The initial experiences are amazing, and I can understand why people use them and keep on using them.

Initially I tried it a few times in the presence of others, but my company never seemed to do anything except distract me from concentrating. So I took to my room, in time, and set up a solitaire as like previous with alcohol. It was here I saw the true potential of LSD: With the drug mescaline novelist Aldous Huxley saw in a small vase of flowers "What Adam had seen on the morning of his creation - the miracle ... of naked existence ..." An April 1993 poem:

A slow grinding arthritic craving,
That's what acid is.
It's soft into itself,
It's absolute in its beauty;
The warm skin calming rattling bones,
Rippling sensations causing shotgun love.

It's about inner achings and multiplied makings;
It's about loving all those faces and figures,
Shapes and shadows,
You've never seen before ...
Quite in
That fashion.

I doubt I will try it again (for the state achieved through the drug must be attainable naturally), but the fact remains, it changed the way I saw the world and myself. Ultimately, I will not deny it rots one's brain. I met a handful of people in the alternative scene who were just not 'there' anymore due to repeated use. May 1993:

ACIDITY

Once I stood for hours
In a pharaoh's pose
And saw that it was worth
Only five bucks ...

Quitting this form of experimentation was never a problem for me. Other than LSD, I tried smoking marijuana a few times. My experience here, more often than not, was in favor of lung burn.

Alcohol. Sex. Drugs. Music. -- truly, one's desire can be consuming if not careful. As noted in the examples above and in past letters, such a casual and carefree approach to happiness could not keep my undivided attention though. Each initially had its respective fantastic effects but, over a period of time, I found myself in a worse state of disorientation than before.

Also, such 'fixes' did not stimulate my thought but numbed me into being a vegetable. There was no 'fix' at the end of such paths. With each consecutive 'fix,' one just keeps on 'fixing' until it is game over. One becomes limitless and 'free' all right, because one ceases to exist, mentally or altogether.

I cannot deny being prejudiced in my experimentation to a degree. Nevertheless, I experimented, and I also cannot deny the insight I have come to learn from such experiences.

It was at the end of my university term that I was considering staying with Marjorie for a while in Edmonton to see how our relationship would be, but, among other incidents, the Los Angeles riots at the end of April 1992 shocked me back into reality. Having just left a tumble relationship eight months earlier, I did not think I was ready to attempt another one. So I took my leave and went to Yellowknife to try and find work and begin building for 'Africa.'

From May 1992 to June 1993 you have a little information on through past letters. Norman Wells. Work.

In July of 1993 I took a big fall. Having found physical fitness again, I ended up blowing my muscles in enthusiasm (freedom through discipline ) and came down hard, flat on my face, that is: drinking a lot. (I first tried drinking alcohol at the age of eighteen. My first year of university it developed into a periodic habit. I remember talking to Dad before I left and saying: "It is amazing how we run to comforts that only serve to make our condition worse. We know this but we still do it.")

Torn by nuclear warfare
Trapped by an abortion
Taken by armageddon
And left drunk with drugs.

This is 1993.

Well, come January 1994, not even a month into my 'world tour,' I was exhausted. After an additional one and a half years from my leaving university, I came to the clear realization that trying to cross over from enervating to constructive addictions is not so easy. I had been given insight through experience, but now I had to deal with the memories I had made, for not all of them were unpleasurable.

I had long known that disciplining myself would provide me a certain degree of freedom, but I had been unable to implement a total revolution. In other words, whenever I tried to escape from one thing, another drew me back. The ideas which smouldered for those eighteen months and were eager to burst into flame can best be seen and summarized in two sections of a January 1993 poem, Salis. The first is a state of mind:

Choked between God's damned chains and the cybernetic byte.

The second detailing that state of mind (the one above) I was going to have to overcome - asking for more than just mere nihilism (to hold all traditional values as unfounded and existence as senseless and useless ) in its place - and to find or even create the philosophy that continued to elude me (but had found in pieces):

The wisdom to transgress the pain of life's evanescence
is crippled by a constitution stoned on its own euphoric decadence --
pounding rhythms, scattered visions; no more will we heed, no more will we bend
to the profitable crucifixion of an estranged heart drowning in lies told never to mend.
let us become one virtuoso of painted rage bleeding the contours of a new resolution,
massaging the leech with a grain of salt -- vomiting retribution via revolution.

In that January of 1994, having reached the emptiest state I had been in for as long as I could remember, I decided I had enough. The night I slept in the streets of Venice and the day I carried my backpack around for 14 hours was the 'beginning' of my revolution. While in Patras, Greece, I reasoned that I avoided change because my position allowed for it. Since I was being so unreasonable with myself for not changing my miserable ways, I was going to have to implement unreasonable methods to break my stubbornness. It was plain to see, despite all the troubles and pain I had experienced in my life, that it was still not enough to motivate me to change peacefully. The confrontation between such conflicting values could no longer be suppressed.

So I walked four hundred kilometres through Greece for the sole purpose of smashing this resistance down. I had to take experimentation a new direction, and like before, perform it with seriousness. As there was no happiness in lawlessness, I had to find out for myself whether or not there was true happiness within 'the confines of law.' I walked with that backpack until I could barely stand. My motto? Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin's political statement altered for a personal war- a war with myself: "Whatever aids the triumph of revolution is ethical; all that hinders it is unethical and criminal ."

One year later, can I say I have succeeded in my ambition? To an unfathomable degree - yes. Seventeen years of chains have I shattered in one year, and each successive day the memories which try to draw me back grow more distant, less strong. Each successive day my reasoning becomes sharper and I see more things about myself and my environment. I guess what I am trying to say is that things are making a lot more sense, in a progressive manner ...

December 10, 1994 was the day my most recent landslide of insight began, and it has not let up since. I mentioned the idea of Paper Two last letter, well, its production has already begun ...